Far too often, talk around organizations’ transition to the cloud is made out to be a binary. 

The picture that gets painted is one where the organization is either staying behind in the legacy on-prem or they are cutting all the cords and diving headlong into the soft pillowy embrace of the cloud. 

It makes for compelling writing, trust me, but it does not hold up to the reality that many organizations are undergoing as they map out their hybrid working strategy.  

A far more common story that we are seeing now is organizations moving away from Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS) to robust cloud environments like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams. They know that they want the flexibility of the cloud with its promise of cost savings, ease of scalability, and frankly the opening up of multiple key business options and integrations.  

A common refrain that you hear from these organizations once they start to explore their options is how they are ready to step outside their lane of sticking solely to Cisco’s products. Once they move to a stronger cloud footing, they can mix in their Cisco services with Teams, contact center services like Five9 and other popular products like Zoom.  

At the same time, they are not ready to totally walk away from their on-prem setup either because they have particular apps running on their system or it would simply be too much of a shake up for their employees to make the jump all at once.  

Instead, they prefer to make a more gradual transition, adopting cloud UCaaS solutions on top of their telephony but still hosting specific services and extending the life of their handsets for another couple of years.   

Every organization has to weigh out the pros and cons and find the right balance for them. 

Cost Benefit Analysis Will Vary 

Speaking with CallTower’s VP of Global Channel Sales Andy Ramos, he makes the point that when you boil the transition from on-prem to the cloud, the economics of the endeavor will not necessarily be a linear path to direct savings.  

Some organizations that have invested heavily in handsets or other bits of hardware may have some trepidation about moving to the cloud and seeing all of that investment go out the window when the cloud services make them obsolete.  

However, on the other hand, Ramos explains that the savings on regular costs like maintenance and hardware replacements will be a very attractive silver lining around that particular cloud. This adds to the fact that they can continue to benefit from regular upgrades to service and features without the need to buy new handsets or other tech provides some pretty enticing incentives to make the move to the cloud.  

Add to this equation that the big providers like Cisco and Microsoft have shifted their focus, and importantly their dollars, towards developing their cloud infrastructure and technologies. This is not to say that the on-prem systems are going to disappear tomorrow, but we can expect them to fall behind pretty quickly over the coming years as the cloud business eats their lunch.  

Quick and Dirty Checklist 

So given these considerations and the direction of the market, we have laid out a couple of valuable tips for organizations on how to make a smoother transition towards a more cloud heavy environment. 

Can Someone Pick Up the Phone? 

It may seem like a strange one, but be sure to check with your vendor to see that they do in fact offer the PSTN services in your area.    

In our rush to the cloud, we need to remember that basic telephony services are still a fairly critical part of running a business.  

Not all providers cover every area. So, while they may be happy to resell you the service to Teams, Webex or whatever else you want for your UCaaS, it is worth checking out that they actually provide service where your people work.  

And remember that in the hybrid setup, it is not just about where your offices are, but wherever your people are working from. Can your contractors out in Montana, Peru, or Papua New Guinea make and receive phone calls on your plan? 

Maintain Your Independence 

Avoid being dependent on your vendor for every little change in your service. These may be basic actions like adding or removing users, changing settings.  

Don’t get it wrong. You want to be sure that you are working with a vendor that will pick up the phone when you call and take care of whatever issue that you are having, but having a user-friendly dashboard where you can manage your services goes a long way in being able to resolve requests quickly.  

Quality Control is Key 

Make sure that the user experience is going to be up to your standards not just in the office but also for the remote work situation.  

Quality of services can and will likely vary depending on location. Not every network can support the same quality of streaming for the remote team in some states or regions. 

Verifying how calls sound and if the video chats freeze is a process that comes more with trying out the service for yourself and finding out where the quality falters.  

This is a long way of saying that it is hard to know ahead of time, but still, ask your vendor about their service in all the locations that you expect to be using it.  

Work with Experienced Vendors at Your Pace 

Along with the above checklist, one of the most important steps to take is to work with a vendor that has the experience of helping organizations develop the right cloud adoption strategy that works for their specific organization.  

In speaking with CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio, he tells UC Today that in his experience, “It’s really trying to make customers understand that you can move your HCS business to CallTower and you have more than one option of what you want to do, you don’t have to decide on one. You can keep the things you like and gain more.”  

“There really is no one-size-fits-all,” says Rubio:

“Not even within the same organization. We will go through a discovery process to help customers find the right mix and match for their needs and uncover that while R&D is happy with Teams, Marketing and Sales stick exclusively to Zoom. All while the C-suite is still using Webex for their calls to other C-suiters.” 

As a leading provider of voice and Cisco services, as well as a Microsoft Gold Partner, CallTower has the global telephony reach, extensive basket of services across all the major product providers, and the experience to help customers create the right solution package that fits their needs.  

“Creating the right UCaaS fit means focusing on solving the customer’s needs rather than thinking linearly via one product vendor or another,” explains Rubio. “We advise an approach that allows you to leverage your collaboration services with Microsoft, and you can keep your voice with Cisco if you want to. Or you can move directly over to completely over to Microsoft. “We know that every organization is going to move at their own pace and we are here to work with them to help them reach their goals.” 

For more information about how to create the UCaaS cloud transition strategy that works for your organization, please visit CallTower and speak to an expert for a free assessment and consultation. 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/SZkn2Od